Uploading stuff to iNat is great, but it’s also important to monitor and maintain the ongoing quality of your contributions. Here’s a few things I do to make sure that happens, and I hope you’ll find it useful!
++++++++++
I’m going to use myself as the example here - for all the links I post, simply replace my username with your own in the URL to view yours.
Casual observations:
It’s a good idea to check your casual grade observations every so often to make sure they are all ones you intended to be casual. There are several different ways that observations might become casual grade without you realizing.
I find it easiest to review these in Identify mode:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=casual&user_id=graysquirrel&place_id=any
Generally, the reason an observation is casual can be found in the Data Quality tab on the right.
In this example, since Wisteria is a commonly cultivated plant in my area, iNat has automatically added a vote for “not wild”. Although I countervoted this, because the seed is sprouting on its own, another user is also of the opinion it should be cultivated (fair enough, it’s a gray area). If you click on the little numbers, you can see the usernames of who voted. I’ve blacked it out for privacy here, but I could tag or message the person and explain why I feel it’s wild and ask them to change their vote. I could also tag some other user and ask them to add a “wild” vote to counter it out.
Sometimes people make mistakes and mark something they didn’t mean to, or misinterpret a photo, or just have a different opinion on what qualifies as wild. However, every so often someone will mark stuff casual out of retaliation for some perceived slight - if you’re a curator or someone who submits a lot of flags, you may want to check your observations a bit more often than others do.
Checking for flagged content:
There are a lot of unresolved flags, especially from back before people were told not to flag duplicate observations. Go to this link: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags
You’ll see the interface in the image below. Check all the boxes under “Reason”, type your username into the “content author” box, and hit “Filter.” If there are any unresolved flags on content you’ve created, you’ll see it there.
Maverick IDs
Bear in mind that just because your ID is a maverick doesn’t necessarily mean you are wrong - don’t let the peer pressure get to you, but it may be worth taking a second look to see if you still stand by your ID.
https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=graysquirrel&category=maverick
Reviewing your old IDs
Have you ever felt confident about a species, done a bunch of IDs, and only later realized there were lookalikes you didn’t know about, and you probably misidentified a bunch of observations? I know I certainly have!
Fortunately, there’s a way to go back and find those old IDs so you can check them. You can use “ident_user_ID=” and “ident_taxon_ID=” to filter for observations that you have applied an ID to, and that have had an ID of that particular taxon applied to them. It’s not foolproof, because it doesn’t mean you were the one who applied the ID of that taxon, but it narrows it down considerably.
You can modify the URL below to fit your needs:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual%2Cresearch&order=asc&verifiable=any&ident_taxon_id=48225&ident_user_id=graysquirrel&place_id=any
This example shows observations which I have applied an ID to at some point, and which have had an ID of “California Poppy” applied to them. Just replace “graysquirrel” with your user name and “48225” with the taxon ID number you want. (To get the number, just search for the taxon in iNat, go to the taxon page, and it’s the number that shows up in the URL).
Checking for spam flags
Sometimes the iNat spam filters catch something they shouldn’t, or someone accidentally marks something as spam. Although the spam flags are generally resolved very quickly, I’ve noticed that sometimes people’s observations don’t get properly re-indexed afterward, resulting in a hidden “spam” tag that keeps them from showing up in searches. If any observations show up for you in this search, all you need to do is change something to force a re-index (the easiest way is to just click and then unclick the “captive” checkbox) and that should clear it out.
Again, just replace “graysquirrel” with your own username in the following URL: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&spam=true&verifiable=any&user_id=graysquirrel&place_id=any
Pre-Maverick Observations (Thanks Diana!)